Children express love in any language

Children express love in any language

By Angela Romano

BRISBANE, Australia (JP): Forty-five Indonesian schoolchildren
came to Australia on a singing tour with a mission to promote
international understanding.

The strongest lessons on cultural diversity and the value of
solidarity, however, have not come from the pleasures of travel
or song but, rather, from the sharing of pain suffered in recent
rioting.

The children from Jakarta's Pelita Harapan school choir, aged
from 12 to 19, have been greeted enthusiastically by more than
1,000 children in 12 schools during their 10-day visit to
Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

The younger Australian children have been especially excited,
often spontaneously leaping to their feet to shake, sway and
swing their hips in an unembarrassed boogie fever during the
Pelita Harapan choir's performances of popular Western and
traditional Indonesian songs.

Three of the Pelita Harapan girls, who danced in Betawi
costume, found themselves surrounded after their performances by
young Australian girls demanding impromptu lessons in traditional
dance.

Some of the Australian boys who were eager to learn too but
not wanting to admit it, would only copy the dancers' lithe
gyrations and sinuous hand movements surreptitiously from a safe
distance.

The younger Australian students have been particularly
captivated by the Jakarta choir, begging for autographs and
addresses and insisting that they don't want their guests to go
after the performances finish.

The children at MacGregor State School, for example, groaned
in unison when their headmaster told them only a few dozen could
meet the Indonesian visitors. The rest left the living culture
lesson to return with palpable reluctance to classroom lessons
from dry textbooks.

Lessons in living culture have been taught both ways.

One Pelita Harapan student, 17-year-old Anastasia, admitted
that media reports about Australia had given her the impression
that Australians were "uncivilized"' and "racist".

The experience of staying with an Australian family changed
her mind.

Helen Soewandi, mother of two of the visiting students, found
Anastasia's comments to be typical.

"They are afraid of racism. They read a lot of negative
stories in the newspapers and they have the feeling that
Australians reject Asians. But they are accepted into Australian
families who treat them like their own children. And they find
that they are really nice," she said.

The Pelita Harapan students have also been impressed by
Brisbane's clean air, large parks and green spaces, quiet suburbs
and shopping facilities, even though most students could only
afford to window-shop.

The cultural experience was at its most intense, however,
during a performance for a Baptist church group, in which some of
the students shared their experiences of the May riots.

The entire choir burst into tears during accounts by two
ethnic Chinese students of their feelings of alienation and
isolation after witnessing how so many Chinese lost their homes,
their possessions and even their lives in the riots.

Some of the pribumi (indigenous) students, such as 17-year-old
Fitri, attempted to express their solidarity.

"I don't think it should happen that way. I am not Chinese. I
am Moslem. But they are the same as us. Some of us don't think
that way because we don't socialize with the Chinese. There is a
gap and it is hard, but we have to make a bridge over it."

Several parents and teachers accompanying the choir said they
had not realized the extent to which the children had harbored
emotional scars from the riots.

Anastasia said discussing such fears has strengthened the
unity of the choir, despite the diversity of religions and ethnic
groups represented in the group.

"We are much closer. There is a greater understanding because
we have shared this and are more open," she said.

The value of diversity in the Pelita Harapan choir was also
recognized at the Queensland Festival of Music competition, held
in Brisbane on Oct. 18, where judges announced that they had been
impressed by the richness and variety within the choir's
performance.

The choir won second prize for their rendition of the
traditional Tapanuli song, Modom, the Balinese song, Janger, and
the pop song, Love in Any Language.

Fitting with the experiences of the choir, Love in Any
Language has become its signature tune, sung at almost all its
Australian performances, often prompting sentimental sighs from
their young Australian audiences.

The choir of 40 girls and five boys return to Jakarta on Oct.
25.